New Arrival: Commodore Amiga 1200

A new machine has joined the collection: a Commodore Amiga 1200 in its original box. It still has the polystyrene end caps, the Commodore power supply, the mouse, the leads and the multi-language information sheet. The case is only lightly yellowed.

// HISTORY

Commodore launched the A1200 in late 1992 at £399, as the successor to the hugely popular Amiga 500. It introduced the AGA (Advanced Graphics Architecture) chipset to the home Amiga. That raised the colour limit from 32 to 256 on screen, chosen from a palette of 16.8 million. It also came with a faster 68EC020 processor and twice the memory.

The A1200 sold well in the UK and Germany, but Commodore went bankrupt in April 1994, only 18 months after it launched. Later owners, including Escom, brought it back into production for a short time. The machine still has a big community, and accelerator cards, hard disk upgrades and new games are still being made for it.

// SPECS

// HOW IT WAS USED

The A1200 was mainly a games machine. AGA titles such as Banshee, Alien Breed 3D, Gloom and Super Stardust showed off the new chipset. It also had a lively demoscene. With a hard disk and a trapdoor accelerator it could do serious work too, including music in OctaMED, art in Deluxe Paint, and video titling and 3D rendering. Its hardware was the basis for the CD32 console.

// WHAT'S NEXT

Here's the plan before it gets switched on:

Progress updates will be posted here. For more vintage machines, see the hardware section.